1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention most generally relates to merchant operated, manual entry and magnetic card swipe point of sale terminals for entry of purchase information and for swiping and keying of purchaser's credit card numbers and personal identification numbers; and in particular to point of sale terminals adapted for the particular requirements of visually impaired purchasers.
2. Background Art
The art of point of sale terminals has previously been generally constrained by the assumption that merchants are the primary operators, and that keyed entries are verifiable by the information displayed or printed out on a receipt slip. While the credit card or debit card number can be swiped or be assumed to be correctly entered by the merchant, the consumer's PIN (personal identification number), typically associated with a debit card, is expected to be manually keyed by the consumer in order to maintain its secrecy.
Referring to FIG. 1, a typical point of sale terminal of the prior art is illustrated, with the common features: power connection 1, telephone connection 2, keypad 3 consisting of numeric and special function keys, magnetic card swipe 4, alpha/numeric display 5, and receipt printer 6. As illustrated, the device is connected to power and by telephone line to the financial services network of which the host merchant is a subscriber.
The card swipe mechanism provides for entering account numbers and other information that may be embedded in the magnetic strip on the purchaser's credit or debit card. The keys of the keypad have customized symbols or legends in addition to the usual telephone style numeric layout, which guide the host merchant in conducting the special operations and sequences required by the terminal or the network to which it is connected. The special operations and sequences are required in order to execute a transaction and to do the periodic settlement activities. The visual electronic display and the printed receipt may or may not be augmented by a beep or similar other non-intelligent audio feedback signal indicating a completed or failed sequential step.
It will be readily apparent that vision impaired debit card users often can not or have difficulty with manual entry of their PIN on conventional point of sale terminals, and must resort to disclosing their PIN to the merchant or a third party for manual entry, thus compromising the security of their bank accounts.
Furthermore, where the information on the transaction total is limited to an electronic display and a printed receipt, the vision impaired consumer is totally dependent on the accuracy and integrity of the merchant to have charged the correct transaction amount to their credit or debit card. Without the immediate opportunity to compare the dollar amount being recorded at the time of the sale, it will be unlikely or impossible for the vision impaired consumer to detect errors later, and difficult at best to correct them after the fact.
In summary, with the use of conventional point of sale terminals, the vision impaired consumer is clearly vulnerable to compromises of the security of their bank accounts when they give out their PINs to facilitate a debit card transaction, and to errors or intentional misconduct in recorded credit and debit card transaction amounts, where at least the total charge is not immediately verifiable by the consumer.
In other categories of electronic equipment design such as ATMs (Automatic Teller Machines), organizations representing the interests of blind and vision impaired persons, such as Associated Services for the Blind, Cincinnati Association for the Blind, Jewish Braille Institute of America, Lighthouse for the Blind of Houston, Lighthouse for the Blind (St Louis), Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Visions Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired, American Foundation for the Blind, Braille Institute of America, The Chicago Lighthouse for People who Are Blind or Visually Impaired, Pennsylvania Association for the Blind, American Foundation for the Blind, Helen Keller Services for the Blind, Connecticut Institute for the Blind, Center for the Visually Impaired, Community Services for the Blind and Partially Sighted, and American Council of the Blind, have promoted the adoption of operating standards such as promulgated by the American National Standards Institute, that facilitate direct use of such equipment by vision impaired consumers. These standards have not previously been recognized as relevant in the context of a merchant's point of sale terminal.
The reader may find the following materials instructive of the general state of art relating to visually impaired user interface with electronic systems, prior to the present invention: Accessibility of Information/Transaction Machines (ITMs) results of a research project by the Trace R&D Center for the US Access Board, by Chris M. Law and Gregg C. Vanderheiden, University of Wisconsin-Madison, allegedly posted on the web at www.dinf.org/tide98/124/law vanderheiden.html on Aug. 24, 1998; International patent application WO 98/27533, Automatic Bank Teller Machine for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Citicorp Development Center, published Jun. 25, 1998; U.S. Pat. No. 5,185,515, Automated Teller Machine and Method Thereof, Kunihiko, published Feb. 9, 1993; U.S. Pat. No. 5,412,189, Touch Screen Apparatus with Tactile Information, Cragun, pub'd May 2, 1995; U.S. Pat. No. 5,589,855, Visually Impaired Customer Activated Terminal Method and System, Blumstein et at, pub'd Dec. 31, 1996; European patent application no. EP 0 720 131 A1, A Self-Service Transaction Terminal, NCR International, Inc., pub'd 03.07.1996; U.S. Pat. No. 5,444,616, Financial Transaction Systems and Methods Utilizing a Multi-Reader Transaction Terminal, Parameswaran et al, pub'd Aug. 22, 1995; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,310,885, Point of Sale Terminal Having Prompting Display and Automatic Money Handling, Azcua et al, pub'd Jan. 12, 1982.